Toughy:
Firstly, just because a similar argument was made for slavery does not mean that the argument necessarily works. The logic you are using is this:
People said slavery was natural, critical to society, etc. Slavery was a moral evil. People said a moral evil was critical to society. They were wrong. THEREFORE, any argument on the basis of it being critical to society is also suspect.
The problem is that it does not follow. Just because society was wrong about slavery and used a very bad and inconsistent logic to reach their wrong conclusion *does not mean* that any argument reaching a similar conclusion is therefore wrong. To see why let's take this. Just so it's clear that this is NOT a Godwin violation I am NOT comparing any position that anyone has taken with anything the Nazi's ever did or espoused.
The Nazi's were wrong about any number of things. Nazi scientists were the first to link smoking with cancer. But the Nazi's were wrong. THEREFORE, they must have been wrong about smoking causing cancer. Except that smoking DOES cause cancer. Does that mean we now have to reverse position and claim that since they were right about this one thing, they must have (or might have been or we endorse) anything else they might have stated? No.
Works both ways, Toughy. Perhaps you are right but this *still* avoids the central question. Again, for the purposes of this discussion I am willing to stipulate that you are right. I grant you that IF society were arranged in a way more congenial to your idea of what society *should* be like (and whether you are willing to acknowledge that you are talking about remaking society as you would like it to be, that IS what you are talking about) THEN society would be a better place. My question is how do you get society to go along with you?
That's the question you keep avoiding, Toughy. What if the rest of us, or a majority of us, find your idea suspect? What then? How do you convince a society to *completely* change how things are done if they do not want to?
Since you invoked slavery, I'm going to remind you of how slavery ended. The South did NOT want to end slavery. Blacks did but white Southerners, for the most part, saw nothing particularly abhorrent about the system and would have been happy to let it continue indefinitely. Slavery ended because the North invaded the South, beat them into abject submission, and then imposed emancipation at the point of a bayonet. Are you prepared to go to that length, Toughy?
Now, the South was manifestly wrong. There are no arguments that one can make in favor of slavery that do not start out with having to deny the humanity of the enslaved group. But the point here is not whether the South was wrong (that is not in dispute) it is HOW the South ended up having to accept that slavery would no longer be allowed in this nation. It is now illegal to have slaves. Is THAT what you are after, Toughy? Making it *illegal* to marry?
Again, you don't have to convince me--at least not for the moment. I am stipulating that your idea of how to order society is *self-evidently* better, for the purposes of this discussion. My concern is how you get from where we are now, to where you believe we should be. Again, how do you deal with the innumerable people who are either unconvinced that this actually *will* be a better world or who are convinced that it will *not* be a better world? That's the question, Toughy.
Cheers
Aj
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toughy
By sacred spiritual bond I am talking about pair bonding and a religious or legal aspect is not required to have that bond. I'm so not a believer in a personal god.
Holding tightly to the tools of the patriarchy will never change the patriarchy. Civil and religious marriage are tools of the patriarchy used to control girls and women. Slavery was (and still is) a tool of the patriarchy and was so ingrained in all societies and cultures and endorsed by the law and religion. One probably heard the same arguments when the idea that slavery was wrong started permeating society and cultures around the world. Slavery was centuries old and appeared to be critical to the social structure of the entire world. Guess what...........it wasn't and isn't.
All those legal benefits civil marriage gets don't have to be connected to civil marriage.
There is no reason to believe that social structure is stagnant. Obviously it's not and there is no reason to keep defending the structure of marriage. It's no one's business how I order my life and what kind of family I create and live in.
As long as we keep arguing for our limitations and hold fast to how the patriarchy runs the world, we will keep having those limitations and the patriarchy. Paradigm shifts do happen and it always starts with one person.
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